Beware of business email gift card scams, and a new gang of crooks is impersonating lawyers.
Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Monday, November 7th, 2022. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com.
On my last podcast I talked about telephone scams aimed at consumers. Today’s topic is gift card purchasing email scams aimed at company employees. They think they’re fulfilling a favour for a boss who asks them to buy gift cards for Amazon, PayPal or a credit card company. These can be bought in supermarkets, drug stores, malls, and they can also be bought online. What crooks want is an untraceable way to get money. Victims are told to send the serial number on the cards to the crook, either by email or with photos from their smartphones. The crook then re-sells the card numbers on the black market at a discounted price. Or, if they get Amazon cards, the crook will spend the funds on goods and re-sell then on a legitimate online market. Or they may buy cryptocurrency.
Typically the scam starts with an employee getting an email from their manager or boss asking them to spend their own money buying gift cards for an event — around this time of year Christmas is a common excuse. The ‘boss’ wants to give gift cards to staff for the holiday, or as a bonus because the company had a good year, or a valued client needs iTunes gift cards. It may be a personal request: ‘I want to get my wife a surprise gift…
